Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) tables and other software tables are often used to display a matrix of alphanumeric data, such as product identifiers, quantities, and prices. However, HTML tables and other software tables are also often used for page layout structures to create a decorative box or other shape that simply enhances the appearance of other text or other content. In this latter case, cells of the table can be arranged to display a colored border, a shadow, or other format decoration. These decorations usually appear to be cohesive units. For example, a colored border appears to be a single box around some inner content data. However, the colored border is typically just a set of separate table cells that are assigned the same fill color. The dimensions and locations of each separate table cell are defined and arranged in logical relation to each other so that they appear as a single border when rendered in a browser display. Although the ability to specify parameters for the individual cells provides a Web designer with fine control over such decorations, building and revising decorative tables of this type can be very time consuming, tedious, and/or complex.
To better understand the complexity, consider an HTML <table> element that includes some. HTML elements that are often used for formatting, like <Cell> and <Img>. Currently, the visual effect of these elements cannot be dynamically altered in a consistent manner while editing with a graphical user interface (GUI) to perform resizing or other intuitive graphical operations on table cell elements. Instead, these standard HTML attributes must be revised independently. An HTML <table> element also includes attributes for dividing a table into logical components, such as a header (<thead>), a footer (<tfoot>), a body (<tbody>), and a group specified by the above three attributes within a <rules> attribute. However, these logical elements also cannot be dynamically altered for all appropriate table cell elements during resizing or other intuitive graphical operations. Revising one attribute does not necessarily cause a revision to other cells in a table. These limitations increase the time, effort, and skill required to create and revise decorative tables (which are sometimes referred to as “layout tables”).
It would clearly be desirable to associate logically related cells of a table used for decorative formatting, and to provide an intuitive graphical tool for creating and revising such tables as a whole, rather than modifying each individual cell. It would also be desirable to ensure that cells of a decoratively formatted table are sufficiently well defined so as not to exceed the capabilities of the intuitive graphical tool, which could lead to an unsatisfactory experience by a user of the tool.